Frozen food has excellent preservation capacity, can keeps its freshness, and is convenient to use.

As a leading company in the frozen food industry, Nichirei Foods has been thinking about "what we can do for the world with freezing technology" day in and day out.

For example, reducing food loss, increasing food self-sufficiency, improving food shortages, extend healthy life expectancy, fostering new food cultures and reducing CO2 emissions.

Nichirei Foods believes that there are still new possibilities hidden in refrigeration.

Nichirei Foods provided technical cooperation for the "Evolving Frozen Food" corner utilizing this technology at the signature pavilion "EARTH MART" at the Osaka Kansai Expo.

The theme of EARTH MART is "Thinking about life through food.”
This pavilion is designed to share the possibilities of the food culture nurtured by the Japanese people and the evolution of food through technology while confronting issues of the global environment and hunger, and to think together with visitors about "new ways of eating" that will lead to a better future.

We decided to cooperate with the exhibition because we sympathize with the idea of "showing the future of food through an imaginary supermarket" of Mr. Kundo Koyama, the producer of the theme project of EARTH MART.

How on earth can we show you the "future of frozen food?"

At that time, I still had no idea what the "future of frozen food" was. How could we express it? The members of Nichirei Foods did not have that image.

So, first, we began brainstorming with Mr. Koyama.

"Can we make it possible to make a quick-frozen pizza baked in Naples, Italy, come out of a vending machine in Japan?"
“Since the temperature in outer space is as low as -270°C, if we could send a rocket into space with food, could we freeze it without using any energy?”

Dreamlike ideas kept coming up one after another, but we could not find a way to realize them.
With no clear landing point for our discussions, it was an encounter with a certain person that turned the tide.

The idea was, “Can we show the future of frozen food using the cryogenic grinding technology used in Professor Furukawa’s 'Yawaraka Shoku'?”

In fact, Nichirei Foods had the technology to combine powdered protein and rice flour and form them into rice grains, such as protein rice.

Professor Furukawa's cryogenic grinding technology combined with Nichirei Foods' knowledge of protein rice could potentially produce beyond just protein rice.
Also, it may be possible to make new upcycled rice by quickly freezing and powdering ingredients that had previously been discarded.

The members of the project, including Mr. Koyama, were in agreement.
Discussions immediately began on what specific ingredients could be combined to make upcycled rice.

For example, by combining cryogenic grinding technology with broken or off-grade rice that has been crushed during milling or rejected during sorting and out-of-spec vegetables that are out of standard in size and shape, we may be able to produce 'delicious rice full of vegetable nutrients'" .

At this year's Expo, a variety of new upcycled rice dishes, recreated by members of the group through their ideas, are now  on display.

Sustainable freezing technology that preserves food for long periods of time without losing its flavor or nutritional content, and allows you to use only the amount you need.

Cryogenic grinding technology that not only reduces transportation costs through compression processing, but also crushing liquids and solids, allowing for flexible combinations.

The combination of these technologies is expected to help solve social problems such as food loss and hunger.

Furthermore, Harayama says that some customers come to Terrace Nichirei, a restaurant operated by Nichirei Foods, after learning about EARTH MART's "evolving frozen food.”

The possibilities of food are expanding more and more with the technology of freezing and cryogenic grinding.
What kind of future awaits us?

Please keep your eyes on frozen food as they continue to evolve!


The cryogenic grinding technology was developed with the technical cooperation of Professor Hidemitsu Furukawa of Yamagata University.
Professor Furukawa is currently working on the "Development of Innovative Long-Term Food Preservation Technology Using Low-Temperature Frozen Pulverized Hydrous Gel Powder" under the Moon Shot-type Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Research and Development Project of the Cabinet Office (administered by the Institutional Research Institute for Food Science and Technology, Japan).